


Of Towns and Toasters

by rionaleonhart



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, inspired by Silent Hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-28
Updated: 2005-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24387838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rionaleonhart/pseuds/rionaleonhart
Summary: The Doctor and Rose find themselves in a town that doesn't seem entirely right.
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No longer canon-compliant; I wrote this back in 2005, just prior to the canonical 'Bad Wolf' reveal.

It said a lot for what had happened to her that Rose Tyler could wake up, get dressed, walk through a convoluted maze of passageways in a police box that also happened to be a time machine, cheerfully greet an alien who was intently examining what looked like a toaster but was in fact essential to the well-being of said time machine, and ask in a matter-of-fact manner what they were going to do today.

And when the Doctor was pumping up the TARDIS in preparation for taking them to the planet of T'skasa (the details about which he had been worryingly vague, but he had assured her that she was going to love it there), she didn't bat an eyelid. After all, she had seen it all before.

This time, however, something seemed a little... different. She watched with mild interest as the lights on the flight console began to flick on-and-off with ever-increasing rapidity, and then all turned abruptly to the exact same shade of mauve.

And then, before she had the chance to realise exactly what that meant, the thing-that-looked-like-a-toaster exploded.

The Doctor froze, staring in horror at the smoking remains. He turned to grin at her after a second, but it seemed somehow forced.

"We're in trouble."

"Why?" asked Rose, worried. "What's it do?"

"I don't know, but _that_ can't be good."

"You don't _know_? How can you not know what it does?"

"It just... turned up. I didn't put it there, but it must be important, because otherwise it wouldn't be in the TARDIS."

Rose shook her head, trying to make sense of what she had just been told. "So... a toaster appeared in here, and because it broke we're in trouble? What, are we going to die from lack of toast?" Even given everything else she had been through, this was just too unbelievable.

"It's _not_ a _toaster_."

She knelt to pick up a piece of the partially-melted metal casing, and squinted to read the words engraved into it. " _Bad Wolf_. Aren't they some kind of toaster place? Y'know, kitchen appliances?"

"Never heard of -" the Doctor began, but before he could finish his sentence an explosion rocked the TARDIS.

-

Rose didn't know how long it was before she regained consciousness, but when she did the Doctor was sitting by the door, watching her. He started when she opened her eyes - a little guiltily, she thought, but she wasn't in the mood to wonder why. She pulled herself to her feet and stared at him.

"...Where are we?"

He nodded towards the door. "Had a look around before you woke up. It's safe." He looked troubled, though, and she frowned.

"What was that crash? Maybe we should just leave."

"What, the noise? That was just the TARDIS making one of her more graceful landings." He grinned at her, and Rose realised to her relief that his spirit was returning to him. "And anyway, we can't leave until we get another 'toaster', can we?"

-

She stepped out onto the street, tugging the coat she had taken from the wardrobe closer around herself to keep out the cold. "Where are we?" Everything seemed to be tinged with grey, she noted as she looked around - grey clouds, grey streets, grey buildings. "Can't we go someplace cheerful for a change?"

"I didn't decide to come here," the Doctor said shortly, locking the TARDIS. Rose had thought that he was beginning to cheer up, but she guessed that the gloominess of their surroundings was having an impact on his mood. "That thing exploded, and it landed us here. Y'see, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with time travel - you may have experienced a couple yourself." Rose could barely restrain herself from snorting. "And the only thing that stops there from being an _infinite_ number of things to go wrong is the fact that we're only confined to the one universe, the one dimension. And the only thing that keeps us _there_ is that bloody toaster thing."

She watched him warily. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Rose Tyler," he said as he replaced the key in his pocket, "that we're on Earth."

"Earth? What's wrong with that, then?"

"Not your Earth. This is in a different dimension - I don't know what the changes are, but whatever they are, they're focused here. I couldn't stop us from landing, but I was able to track the major differences and land us in this area."

Rose took a moment to process this rather startling information. "Why'd you want to do that?"

"Can't you go _five seconds_ without asking a question?" he snapped, and then, after a brief hesitation, shook his head. "...sorry. I thought we might be able to find the part we needed here. Good a place as any." He paused. "Plus, y'know, I was curious."

They were both silent for some time, looking around at the street in which they had landed. Rose was just thinking that the place was clearly deserted and therefore exceptionally unpromising, when the Doctor stretched and spoke.

"Foggy, isn't it?"

She stared down the perfectly clear street, and then turned to look at him, bewildered.

"...No."


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor had been staring out through the fog for some time; at least, he _insisted_ that there was fog there, but Rose couldn't see any and was beginning to suspect that the toaster's actual function had been keeping his sanity - such as it was - intact. She had seated herself, her back against the TARDIS, and watched him as he just _stood_ there, doing absolutely nothing.

She had to privately admit that it probably wasn't the most riveting experience she'd ever had.

"I'm going to take a look around," she said eventually, surprising herself at her own initiative; it was usually the Doctor who led the way when they landed, but she was getting the feeling that in this case he didn't have any more of a clue than she did. "Got to be better than just sitting here. Coming with me?"

The Doctor nodded, not looking at her as she got to her feet, and they started down the street.

They didn't get far before the phone on the TARDIS began to ring, though, and the Doctor immediately whipped around, having learnt that disconnected phones ringing could never mean anything good. There were no gas-mask-clad children in sight, though, and he relaxed a little as the ringing began to die away. Rose stared at it oddly, though.

"I didn't know that was a real phone."

"It isn't. This has happened before." He wondered briefly whether to tell her the exact circumstances under which it had happened, but he had enough to worry about without disturbing Rose as well.

She frowned. "Why'd it just... fade away like that?"

"What?"

"Phones don't _do_ that. They just stop ringing - they don't _fade_."

He stared at her for a moment, then turned - there were more important things to think about. "Stay close behind me, all right?" he muttered, shading his eyes in a thoroughly unsuccessful effort to see through the thick fog as he began to walk.

"We're not exactly going to get separated, are we? I mean, we're the only people around. I don't think I'm going to be swept away in the crowd any time soon."

"Rose, this _isn't the time for that_. Just trust me, okay?" She didn't answer, and he was simultaneously glad of the quietness and made slightly uncomfortable by the fact that he couldn't be sure of her presence any more. He could barely even hear her footsteps.

Stupid soft-soled shoes.

There _was_ another sound, though, that he could hear now that Rose had fallen silent - like quiet footsteps, but coming towards them through the fog ahead. He grinned. Someone was here, then. Maybe the search wouldn't take so long as he had thought.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched squealing noise from behind him, and he spun. "Rose!"

Rose stood there, safe, albeit looking a little bewildered. The Doctor was relieved, but not about to let his guard down.

"What was that noise?"

"I think... I think it came from my coat."

"Your _coat_? What exactly is that coat _made_ of?" But she had already fished out her mobile phone from one of the pockets. The squealing noise had stopped, but the phone was now hissing and crackling loudly. It reminded the Doctor of something, but he couldn't think of what.

Rose answered the question he hadn't asked. "It's like... static. You know, the static on a radio? It's like that." She shook the phone, and tried pressing some of the buttons, but the noise didn't stop. "Must be something messing with the reception."

The Doctor shrugged. "Nothing important, probably. But if it doesn't shut up soon I'm going to have to smash it to bits."

He turned around and found himself staring at a monster.

It was shaped like a dog, but its canine teeth were too pointed and its muzzle too long for a regular dog, and it was moving with a trotting motion which the Doctor had never seen a dog use. If anything, it reminded him of a...

It didn't _matter_ what it reminded him of. What _mattered_ was that a skinless canine creature was coming towards them, and now it had broken into a run.

He moved instantly to shield Rose from it. She seemed confused.

"What's wrong?"

The Doctor said nothing, keeping his eyes on it. When it leapt - leapt with surprising grace, not doglike at all - he dodged out of the way, pulling Rose with him, and the creature landed harmlessly. It spun around, making a snarling sound that was barely audible over the static from Rose's phone, which had suddenly become almost deafening.

"What are you doing?" yelled Rose over the sound of the phone.

"Rose, can you please be _quiet_ when I'm trying to save your life?"

"Save it from _what_?"

Momentarily stunned by this reaction, the Doctor hesitated, and the dog-thing leapt straight at him. On reflex he caught hold of its flank - it was cold and slimy, but he didn't flinch; he had touched worse, after all - and twisted, flinging it away from him. A split-second later, he realised where he had just thrown it to.

"Rose! Get out of the _way_!"

Rose just stared at him, bewildered, as the dog-thing hurtled towards her - and _through_ her, as if she had been made of nothing more than air. It hit the pavement hard, and _faded away_ , whimpering piteously.

The Doctor stood frozen, his eyes on where it had been, as the volume of the static from Rose's phone dropped away to nothing.

-

"A wolf?"

The Doctor pressed a hand against his forehead. "The _shape_ of a wolf. It couldn't have _been_ a wolf. Wolves have fur and skin, for one thing."

"Mmm-hmm." She sounded skeptical, but she was trembling as she said it - no, shivering. He offered her his jacket, almost without thinking, and she took it gratefully. "Thanks. Aren't you cold?"

He glanced over at her. "Nah. Just leave me with the sonic screwdriver."

She handed it to him. "So, a wolf - a _skinless_ wolf - jumped through me -"

"Was thrown," he corrected her, and looked slightly apologetic. "Sorry about that, by the way."

She raised her eyebrows. "You should be. You threw a non-existent wolf at me. I could have been _seriously injured_."

He glared at her. "It existed, I can tell you that."

"Okay. The wolf existed. I obviously couldn't see it because I was running around with my eyes closed, or perhaps because I am not gifted with your wonderful powers of alien-ness."

" _Exactly_."

"So, how'd it go through me then?"

He chose not to answer that, walking ahead in silence, and Rose had to suppress a laugh before setting off after him.

-

It was some time before the Doctor realised that he had been so engrossed in his thoughts that he had forgotten to look out for signs of toasters. Dimension stabilisers. _Dimension stabilisers_. Not toasters, dimension stabilisers. He had to stop letting that girl influence him.

He turned around, meaning to ask Rose whether she had seen any places that looked as if they might house sophisticated alien technology.

Rose was gone.

Well, that was just wonderful.


	3. Chapter 3

Rose groaned and rolled over as she came slowly back to consciousness. When had she fallen asleep? She hoped it hadn't been anywhere near the Doctor; she hated it when he saw her just after she woke up, all rumpled and bleary and hardly able to keep her eyes open, and then she would whack randomly in the general vicinity of her alarm clock and roll clumsily out of bed and go and eat toast. Hot buttered toast. She hadn't had it in a while, not since they'd gone off to explore the universe, really, because when you were busy saving the world from ghosty things and alien things and giant plastic blobby things there wasn't much time for buttered toast, which was a pity because she would have killed for some right now.

It occurred to her that her train of thought wasn't in a particularly logical order or, indeed, making any kind of sense at all. That was perfectly normal; she'd just woken up, after all, and it was probably too early to think sensibly.

The next thing that occurred to her was that she was neither in her own room nor in the TARDIS, and seemed instead to be on a hospital bed in a cramped, colourless room.

That was _not_ perfectly normal, and the startling realisation woke her up completely.

-

Of _course_ Rose had to go missing. Nothing could ever go smoothly, could it? He would have thought that being attacked by possibly-invisible wolves would be enough misfortune for the day, but apparently not.

Well, at least it was something for him to do. And perhaps he would find the dimension stabiliser on the way. Stranger things had happened, after all.

Not knowing what else to do, the Doctor began to retrace his steps. If he found Rose on the way that would be great, but if not he could return to the TARDIS and call her from there. He was halfway down Carroll Street when something made him pause, turn around. The door to a fairly large building was ajar, he saw, and without a second thought he slipped inside.

It was very dark inside (and smelt uncomfortably musty; whatever the building was, it had probably been out of use for decades), and so he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and flicked on the flame. In the welcome light he saw a door in front of him, with 'RECEPTION' written on it in peeling letters. He opened the door cautiously. A desk with a few scattered papers on it, some drawers, filing cabinets around the walls. No sign of Rose, he noted with disappointment, although he had hardly expected her to be in the first room he tried.

He opened a drawer and began to absently flick through the pieces of paper filed there - patient records, he realised. A hospital. He immediately turned his attention to the 'T' section, not really thinking about what he was looking for until he found it.

_TYLER, R.  
\- admitted with severe mental trauma, believed to have been caused by multiple near-death experiences. She makes multiple references to a man with whom she was travelling, and our doctors believe that he may be responsible for putting her in severe danger several times. At present she is situated in room S3, recovering from these experiences._

There was a chart attached to one of the filing cabinets, telling him that room S3 was on the third floor of the hospital.

Thirty seconds later, the Doctor was up on the third floor, which appeared - slightly confusingly - to be the roof of the hospital. They obviously weren't in England, then. He aimed a kick at an innocent bit of fencing and went back down the stairs.

He quickly found room S3 on the second floor. The door was locked, and so he immediately took the sonic screwdriver from the pocket of his trousers - he was already missing his jacket, but if he knew that Rose had it then being without it wasn't too bad - and got to work on the lock. After a few seconds, he realised that the screwdriver didn't actually seem to be _doing_ anything, and he examined it in some surprise. It wasn't short on batteries, it seemed to be in perfect working order... frowning slightly, he tried using it on the hinges, and swore under his breath when that didn't work either.

He knocked on the door. "Rose?" he called. "Rose, are you in there?"

There was a pause. "Doctor?"

The Doctor grinned. "Great to hear from you. Bit worried after you ran off like that. Rose, is there any way of unlocking the door from your side?"

"Um, I don't think so." She hesitated. "Do you know how I got in here?"

"Haven't a clue," he assured her cheerfully. "I'm going to get you out of there, though. Just hold on for a bit." He began to leave, but then turned back. "You all right in there? No mental trauma or anything?"

"No more than usual," she said, sounding slightly taken aback.

"Fantastic. Won't be a minute." With that, he moved to the next room.

He opened the door.

A wolf-thing flung itself at him.

He closed the door rather quickly and moved on to the next.

-

Rose lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The situation was a disturbing one, but she was smiling nonetheless. The Doctor had found her.

When she thought about it, she realised that she had never really doubted that he would. No matter what happened, somehow he would always find her. He was the _Doctor_ , after all.

Now there was just the question of getting out. She tried the handle, and poking various pieces of metal she found in the pockets of the Doctor's jacket into the keyhole, but without success. Eventually she collapsed back onto the bed.

Nothing for it but to wait for him to get her out, then. Which he would obviously manage. Because he was the Doctor.

-

The next few doors were boarded up. The Doctor felt that he would probably be able to get through with the use of the sonic screwdriver, but he wanted to see whether he could get Rose out without it. He didn't want to wear the batteries out too soon; he didn't know how long they were going to be stuck in this town.

The next door was neither boarded up nor locked, but it didn't seem to want to open until the Doctor had slammed into it shoulder-first several times. He stumbled into the room, scowling and rubbing his shoulder, and noticed that there was a dark shape on the bedside table. As he came closer, he saw in the flicker of the lighter that it was a wooden globe - or _half_ a wooden globe, at least, although the jagged splinters along the edge indicated that it hadn't been designed to be taken apart. It rested on a broken stand, and when he raised the lighter in order to get a better look he realised that there was something _in_ the hollow half-globe. After establishing by poking it experimentally with the sonic screwdriver that whatever-it-was was unlikely to bite his fingers off, he took it out.

It was a handgun.

It was ridiculously convenient. He smirked as he examined it. Now he had a weapon, he could defeat those wolf-things - or at least he would have if he didn't hate guns.

So he put it back.

If Rose had believed that he was being attacked, she would have thought him insane for leaving the gun, he thought, with a smile that quickly evaporated. _Rose_. He had to get her out - the first creature he had encountered hadn't seemed able to hurt her, and her room was evidently locked, but there was still no way of telling whether she would be safe.

-

Rose curled up on the cold bed - why couldn't she have magically turned up somewhere with a _duvet_? - and closed her eyes. Suddenly something nudged her face, and she started. It was just a cat, she realised after a second of irrational panic, and smiled. She stroked its back absently a couple of times, and then it jumped lightly off the bed, stalked over to the door, pawed at it until it opened, and slipped out. The door closed again behind it.

Bewildered, Rose got up and tried the handle.

The door was still locked.

-

He couldn't get into any of the other patient rooms, but as he walked back towards Rose's room something caught his eye, and he looked up sharply. There were some doors on the other side of the corridor; he hadn't seen them before. After trying them all with no luck, he noticed that the key was still in the door to the room opposite S1 - 'Examination Room 4', he read from the panel on the door - and he tried it on the lock for room S3 with a kind of ridiculous optimism before reluctantly using it to open the examination room.

When he pulled out the map which he had been drawing as he went along in order to add the room, he noticed that somebody other than himself had written 'BAD' over his 'WOLF' label in room S4. That was odd, but he didn't worry too much about it.

-

She caught a movement in the corner of her eye, and immediately moved to look out of the window. There was nothing there, but she could see that fog was gathering.

Suddenly a car came around the corner. She smiled, realising that they couldn't be the only people here - and then the car vanished into thin air, and she froze.

Movement. The car (all too familiar) came around the same corner again, drove for a short distance, and dissolved. Rose tried to look away, but she couldn't make herself.

The car rounded the corner and disappeared.

The car rounded the corner and disappeared.

The car rounded the corner and disappeared.

She wanted to cry from pain and guilt.

-

The room was pitch dark; there were no windows on this side. He waved the lighter around without much hope, and was about to leave when he noticed it. Something was glinting in the far corner, reflecting the light from the flame. He walked over to it, stepping over a pile of old blankets, and picked it up.

It was a key. Attached to it was a tag showing that it was for room S3.

Grinning like a maniac, the Doctor dropped it into his pocket and made for the door. Now he could free Rose, now they could get out of here -

\- and then something hit his foot, and he looked down.

The small pile of blankets was rolling around on the floor, making hissing noises and generally behaving in a thoroughly unblanketlike manner. The Doctor just stared, unsure of how to act, until the blankets quietened and lay still.

He knew it probably wasn't the most sensible thing to do, but that didn't stop him from crouching down, taking the topmost blanket between forefinger and thumb, and suddenly whipping it away.

The black-and-white cat which had been underneath it looked up at him, startled. He laughed and stroked it under its chin, and it soon relaxed against his hand, purring contentedly.

"You almost gave me a heart attack," he said, amused. He began to scratch it behind the ears, and it purred even louder, lying down and pawing at his leg. Suddenly it rolled over, stared wide-eyed at a corner of the room, and bolted out of the door.

The Doctor stood up slowly, keeping his eyes on the corner which had disturbed the cat. He took a cautious step forwards, holding the lighter out in front of him, and when the shape in the corner came into view he stopped dead.

It looked like a Dalek.

But that was ridiculous. Daleks didn't exist any more, he'd made sure of that -

\- and then it moved, came fully into view, and he forgot how to breathe for a second.

It was shaped like a Dalek, there was no doubt about that, and it moved like a Dalek, but it looked... organic, almost. As if it were made of bare, pulsating flesh, stripped of the skin and fashioned by some sick mind into the shape. The same skinless quality that the wolves had, but it seemed even more bizarre when it was something which was clearly supposed to be mechanical.

The only question that mattered, though, was whether it was as _dangerous_ as a Dalek.

On a sudden impulse, the Doctor threw himself to the ground. There was a loud explosion somewhere behind him, and plaster dust began to rain from the ceiling as he stumbled to his feet again. The blanket which the cat had been under was suddenly ablaze. Praying inwardly that he would live long enough to let Rose out, he ran to the door.

The door was closed.

He didn't remember closing it.

He turned the handle.

The door didn't open.

He twisted the handle, he screwdrivered the handle, he called the handle various obscene names, and still the door stubbornly refused to open. A typewriter beside him exploded and burst into flames - some part of his mind commented that the organic Dalek didn't seem to have the best aim in the world, and the rest of his mind told it to _shut up and figure out how to get out of here_ \- as he threw himself desperately at the door. It didn't work.

The whatever-it-was came closer.

The Doctor heard a clicking sound, as of a key being turned in a lock. Instantly he tried the handle, hardly daring to hope - and this time it worked. He fled the room, slammed the door behind him and locked it immediately; he knew that it almost certainly wouldn't be stopped by a locked door, but hopefully he would survive long enough to unlock Rose.

And yet, he realised as he was turning the key to room S3, it wasn't coming after him. Either it wasn't interested - impossible if it were even remotely connected to actual Daleks - or the door prevented it somehow, in the same way it resisted the sonic screwdriver. In the same way - in the same way the metal door in van Statten's museum had stopped the real Dalek.

He wondered whether Rose had felt like that; the blind, helpless panic of being trapped with something that dangerous. It must have been terrible.

And he had been the one to shut her in with it.

Perhaps - perhaps he had deserved that.

He tried not to think about it, and opened the door.

-

The door creaked open quietly behind her, and there were approaching footsteps, sounding loud in the silence of the room, but Rose didn't turn around. She kept her eyes on the corner, watching as the car appeared again and again.

A hand on her shoulder. She blinked away tears, but she didn't look away from the window.

It took her a moment to realise that the car had stopped rounding the corner. As she watched, almost unable to believe it, the fog began to disperse.

She half-turned and flung her arms around the Doctor's waist, pressing her face into his leg. He seemed startled for a moment, but then grinned. "Good to see you too, Rose."

When she had left the room, the Doctor remained behind for a moment, looking out of the window that she had been at. The fog was so thick outside that he could barely make anything out, but he thought for a moment that he saw a dark shape, speeding along beneath it.

He rejoined Rose back in the corridor, and didn't ask questions.

-

"How could I have a patient record? There's nobody here."

The Doctor shrugged. "Beats me. It was in here, though." He pushed open the door to the reception room, holding the lighter aloft. Rose instantly descended upon an object on top of one of the filing cabinets.

"What's that, then?" he asked, looking for Rose's record. Some part of his mind noted that it should have been on the desk, as he had left it there, but he couldn't be bothered to worry about how it could have found its way back into the drawer.

"I think it's a torch," Rose said from the corner. She pushed a button, and the Doctor narrowed his eyes slightly against the sudden increase in light. She grinned happily. "This should make things easier, right?"

"Go and make my lighter redundant, why don't you?" the Doctor muttered in mock irritation, fishing out the patient record. "Here we go." There was something stapled to it, he noticed, and he detached it before passing the record to Rose.

She was silent for a few seconds. "This is... really, really weird."

He nodded absently, scanning the scrap of paper that he had just unstapled.

_Miss R. Tyler was dispatched to the Woodside Apartments today, despite remaining concerns about her feelings of guilt regarding her father's death..._

"Well," he said, looking up and grinning at her, "we know where we're heading next, then."


	4. Chapter 4

"If you really are getting attacked, why don't we just leave?"

"We can't leave until we get that part."

"So... what happens if there isn't one around here?"

"...It'd be _better_ if we didn't go anywhere until we got that part."

"So we don't actually need it to move the TARDIS? So we could go somewhere a bit more normal and look for it there?"

"There's no way of knowing where we'd end up. We could end up in some dimension where all the planets have been eaten by space midges. Then the space midges would probably go for the TARDIS, and nobody wants that."

"...okay, you've got a point."

-

They hadn't gone far along the street before Rose's phone began screeching static again. She winced and pulled it out of her pocket. "That's it, I'm turning this off."

Remembering what had happened the last time the phone did that, the Doctor looked rapidly around. Behind him, Rose pushed a button and the static cut out.

Something large and worryingly wolf-shaped was coming towards them through the fog.

"Rose -" he began, but she looked up at that moment. She stared at it for a second, frozen, and then turned and bolted down the road. He cursed and set off after her, trying desperately not to lose her in the fog. They came to a stop, eventually.

"That was a _Reaper_ ," she hissed as soon as she'd got her breath back. "What was one of those doing here? Oh god, did I do something stupid again? Will it be like when -" She cut herself off, but he understood her - to an extent, at least.

"What d'you mean, a Reaper? That was one of the wolves. The ones _you_ didn't believe in."

She laughed a little too loudly, stopped a little too abruptly. "Oh, yes. Wolves. _Flying_ wolves. You didn't mention the wings, or the screeching, or the fact that _they looked exactly like Reapers_."

He frowned. "Rose... it wasn't flying."

"Of course it was flying! What else could it have been doing?"

"I never took my eyes off that wolf, and I can tell you, it remained completely earthbound." He paused. "Are you feeling all right?"

"I've just been chased all over this stupid town by a Reaper. What do _you_ think?" She looked around, panicked. "...Maybe we should just leave."

"We can't. I told you." He went quickly through all the streets they had gone down in his head, trying to work out the best route back. "If you want, you can wait in the TARDIS."

"What, and leave you alone?" She was beginning to calm down, to breathe at a more normal rate, and now she found it in herself to grin at him. "You wouldn't last five seconds without me, you know that."

He laughed. "If you say so. Come on, then, let's find these 'Woodside Apartments'."

-

It turned out that their fleeing from the Reaper, or the wolf, or whatever-it-had-been had resulted in their coming very close to the Woodside Apartments; they had been walking away from them before.

Rose was the one who spotted the sign. The Doctor was very surprised, and slightly put out - he couldn't make out a thing through the fog, how was she able to? - but he was grateful to her all the same, although he didn't say it.

The block of flats was as intimidating as the hospital had been from the outside, and just as decaying within. He had hardly expected a thriving community, but the smell of rot was beginning to irritate him. The only floor they could access was the first - the stairs to the second floor had collapsed, the door to the ground floor flats was locked - and most of the doors were unopenable; the first one that opened led into a small flat, full of broken furniture and shattered glass. A small booklet was lying open on a moth-eaten sofa. He picked it up.

"What's that?" Rose asked.

"Some kind of travel brochure. It's for somewhere called Silent Hill." The photograph on the front showed a street he remembered passing through, but busy, full of people. "Must be the place we're in." He flipped it open, read some of the introduction, and snorted.

_Silent Hill will move you and fill you with a feeling of deep peace. I hope your time here will be pleasant and your memories will last forever._

The Doctor smirked and closed the brochure. Despite the situation, just finding out that the town had a sense of humour was enough to cheer him up considerably.

It occurred to him that he was beginning to think of Silent Hill as an entity, rather than merely a town; more like the TARDIS than anything else. Something about that bothered him, somehow.

-

They had to try several doors before finding another that would open. The flat seemed empty, but the Doctor didn't want to leave until he had made certain that there was nothing useful there. He was picking his way carefully among the broken glass from a shattered table in the corner when something caught his eye. He started and looked up.

There was a row of portraits along the wall. Thirteen of them. The first eight were familiar to him, although the final four were strangers. The ninth... he couldn't be sure, although he felt he could probably guess what it had been. The painting had been ripped to shreds, scraps of paper littering the floor. Two words had been scored into the backing of it, which was visible now that the portrait had gone.

Rose moved to stand next to him, looking at the paintings with her head on one side. "Anyone you know?"

The Doctor looked sharply at her. "Why d'you say that?"

She shrugged. "Just the way you jumped like that." She mimicked the movement, much to the Doctor's half-amused irritation. "It was like you'd seen something you recognised."

He looked up at them. Thirteen portraits, the ninth ripped apart and unrecognisable.

"No, it's nothing. C'mon, let's look for the toaster."

-

The second-to-last door on the floor seemed subtly different, and the Doctor realised as he was turning the handle what it was. All the other doors had been rotting, usually coming off their hinges. This door was in perfect condition; from the gleam of the torch off it, it looked as if it had even been recently polished. He opened the door, and Rose went in.

"...okay, this is weird."

"Really? Something _weird_? _Here_?" the Doctor asked, mock-incredulous, as he entered the room. Then he paused, looking around. "...see your point, though."

The room was completely normal. There were warm lights on in the corners, a bed, a wooden desk. None of it rotting or dusty, which the Doctor had come to accept as the norm in this town. Just a regular room.

"How can there be lights on? Why would this town have electricity?" He knelt, followed the power cord of one of the lights with his eyes. Not _completely_ normal, then. "Scratch that, how can there be lights on if they're not even _plugged in_?"

"Maybe it's something t'do with this version of Earth," Rose suggested.

"The only real changes were in this place, though. And why would they have cords if they don't need to be plugged in?" He stood, staring at the lamp. "This is a very, very weird town."

Rose collapsed onto the bed. "Whatever this room is, I'm glad it's here."

The Doctor wasn't sure about that; he'd become used to every room in Silent Hill being derelict and damaged, and so a relatively normal room seemed stranger than anything he'd seen so far.

When he turned, there was a gas mask in the centre of the floor.

He picked it up, smiling. A normal room, with a reminder of the last time he'd really _won_ in it. If the town had suddenly decided to be nice to him, he certainly wasn't going to complain.

-

They stayed in the normal room for some time - Rose had wanted a rest - but the Doctor eventually became impatient, and so they tried the last door. It wasn't locked. Doors that weren't locked rarely seemed to lead to anything good, but the previous room had encouraged him, and after all he had to find a stabiliser.

He pushed open the door and froze, unable to believe what he was seeing.

It was a Dalek.

His immediate reaction was to push Rose aside, so that she would be out of danger - she would be able to run, at least for a while (how far away was the TARDIS? In the shock of the situation, he couldn't remember). She landed heavily on the floor, and the Doctor, who had been hoping to save her by leading the Dalek the other way, instinctively helped her up instead.

" _Run_!" Why wasn't she running, the stupid girl, just because she'd survived _one_ encounter with a Dalek - that was _different_ , it had been warped by her DNA and it had emotion and _why the hell wasn't she running_?

"I don't think it's alive," she whispered, her whole body tense.

The Doctor stared at the Dalek. It didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't burn the flesh from his ( _Rose's_ ) bones, shrieking that the Doctor had to be exterminated. Didn't even glow.

"...No." He moved cautiously forwards. "We're still alive, so it can't be." He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and waved it over the not-Dalek, careful not to touch it - he wanted to be absolutely certain before making any kind of contact with it. "...It's made of wax."

"What?"

"Wax!" The Doctor threw back his head and laughed like a maniac. It echoed unnervingly in the narrow corridor, but he seemed not to care. "A wax Dalek! And I was _scared_ of this!" He pulled the lighter out of his pocket and flicked it on.

"What are you doing?"

The Doctor didn't answer, and he didn't really need to - Rose could see perfectly well that he was entirely engaged in melting the Dalek. She glanced away - his behaviour towards the first Dalek that she had met had disturbed her, and although he didn't seem as _furious_ here, there was still something about it that made her uncomfortable. She moved past him into the room, still averting her eyes, but then she stopped and stared around her.

"Not planning on doing that to _all_ of these, are you?"

The Doctor looked up, and seemed startled for a moment before laughing again. "A whole room of wax Daleks. Fantastic." There was a gleam in his eye that Rose wasn't certain she liked, but perhaps it was just the reflection of the lighter flame. He flicked it off and began tossing it from hand to hand as he walked around the room, inspecting the Daleks. In one corner he paused and reignited the flame in order to see more clearly. Rose glanced over her shoulder at him.

"Want the torch? Or are you just going to commit waxicide again?"

"Torch. This one isn't a Dalek. Looks sort of familiar, though."

Rose tossed the torch to him and he caught it deftly. Curious, she walked over to look at the waxwork.

Familiar, yes. Far too familiar. She stared at it in disbelief.

"Doctor - it's _you_." It was an obvious statement, and she realised that half a second later and waited for him to make some sort of sarcastic comment.

Instead he looked perplexed. "Is it?" He frowned, apparently trying to remember something. "Oh, yes, I suppose it is."

The initial moment of surprise began to wear off, and she found it in herself to laugh. "What, nine hundred years and you never looked in a mirror?"

The Doctor looked affronted. "It's not that! It's just that I haven't -" He caught himself. _I haven't had much time to get used to this body,_ he had been about to say, and now wasn't the time to bring up regeneration.

Rose seemed not to notice the slip. "Anyway, it's weird, but I don't think we'll find anything in here. Let's go." In truth she found the wax sculpture of the Doctor amongst all the Daleks to be somehow frightening, but she wasn't about to say that. "C'mon."

-

"You really hate those Dalek things, don't you?"

"What tipped you off?"

Silence.

"When I shut you in with that Dalek... I thought that I had killed you." A pause. "And then I let it out. There was a city nearby, and I let it out."

Uncomfortable. "But it worked out, didn't it?"

"A million people could have died. _You_ could have died. All because of me."

And millions of people had died, hadn't they? Billions. He'd watched their planets burn.

"I'm still alive, aren't I? And so are they. So there's nothing to worry about, really."

No answer.

"Let's go back to that room, okay? The normal one. You can get some sleep."

"I don't sleep."

"You need it anyway. Come on."

-

Rose raised her eyebrows, looking around the room. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this ten minutes ago."

The room looked as if it had perished in a fire some time before. The walls were blackened; there were some charred pieces of wood that might once have been part of the desk. Rose shone the torch around, trying to work out whether they might have somehow got into the wrong room, and then uncertainly touched the half-melted metal of the bedstead. It was cold. There was no way the room could have burnt down in the few minutes they had been gone without leaving a trace of fire or heat.

The Doctor stood in the doorway, staring at the room. He was silent for some time before saying, quietly, "I'm sorry I dragged you into all of this."

"What, this town? Don't worry about it. It's been interesting." She paused, considering. "Weird and scary, but I kind of expected that, 'cause you're like a weirdness-and-scariness magnet."

"You had nothing to do with it, though. It's me this town is trying to punish. You shouldn't be here."

She turned, stared at him. "What d'you mean, 'punish'?"

"Margaret said I'd have to be a killer to know how they thought." He was staring fixedly at a random point on the wall.

Rose frowned. "But you wouldn't do something like that. You've always been trying to _save_ people. What, are you going to listen to a Slitheen? She lied to you about everything else."

He turned to look at her at last. "Rose, I _destroyed_ the Daleks. I destroyed other planets - innocent planets - just to get to them."

"The Nestene Consciousness," she realised. "Was that -"

"I forced a sun into nova. Right where I knew they would be. Burned their ships. Burned an entire solar system. Watched it happen." He shook his head. "I'm the Big Bad Wolf, destroying homes. Worse. When the wolf couldn't blow down the house of bricks, he didn't try to set it on fire."

Rose swallowed. She didn't like to look at the Doctor, not when he was like this.

"But that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to wipe them from history, make it so they never existed. So I went back in time. I killed their creator."

"You killed -"

"I had no _choice_!" He almost shouted it, and Rose instinctively moved backward, pressed herself against the charred wall.

"But what about - what about the Reapers?"

The Doctor laughed humourlessly. "Yeah, that's right. I changed the timeline, so the Reapers would come to fix it. Heal the wound in time. Restore the balance." He was facing her, but he seemed to be staring into _nothing_. Rose felt increasingly uneasy. "If they did that, the Daleks would come back." A pause. "So _I_ had to restore the balance first."

There was a very long silence, during which he seemed unwilling to look at her. Rose wanted to say something, to ask him what he did, but she wasn't sure whether she would like the answer.

Eventually he spoke again, very quietly.

"The Time Lords. My people. They opposed the Daleks."

He turned, still not looking at Rose. The dimension stabiliser was sitting on the remains of the desk. In a way, he had expected it. He had seen it with Nancy. _Tell the truth, and the answer will appear._

He picked it up and left.

Rose stayed in the room for a long time before she followed him.


	5. Epilogue

The Doctor worked quickly, installing the stabiliser, and seemed almost not to notice when Rose entered. As soon as he was certain that he had sorted the dimensions out, he entered the co-ordinates and began to work intently on the mechanism, not looking up once. Seconds later, the TARDIS stilled.

"Where are we?" Rose asked quietly, after a pause. Her voice seemed far too loud in the silence that had pervaded the air between them.

"Twenty-first century Earth," he responded, his eyes on the flight console. "Your Earth. Right by your place."

"Why'd you take me here?" she asked, half-dreading the answer.

"So you could go home." She wished he would look at her. "I've told you what I did. If you wanted, you could go out of those doors right now. Go home."

"Why do you want me to go?"

He exhaled heavily. "I don't _want_ you to go. I'd just... understand if you did."

She walked around the flight pillar, stood next to him. She had been shocked by what he told her, but she had _seen_ how much he grieved for the loss of Gallifrey, and she had seen how much damage one Dalek could cause, and she had seen how happy he had been when - just _once_ \- everybody lived. In spite of what he had told her, she couldn't judge him. She couldn't leave him.

"But I want to stay."

He looked up at her, startled. Thought back to the room in the Woodside Apartments.

Thirteen portraits, the ninth ripped apart and unrecognisable.

The last four intact.

He took her hand and smiled. Perhaps there was a chance of redemption after all.


End file.
